After 11 years as a sports columnist at the Seattle Times, I have decided to resign. It was entirely my choice, and it was not an easy one. The impetus was the Times declining to run a column I wrote from the perspective of two female student athletes who were opposed to competing against biological males. It was one of several pieces of mine that had been spiked, and I no longer felt like I could properly do my job as a columnist. I lay out the situation in greater detail in the link below, but I want to say that I enjoyed my time with the paper, find the talent there to be immense, and have no animosity toward anyone who works there. It was just time for a change.

The irresponsibility of this vigil is almost impossible to overstate. People who are suicidal fantasise about exactly this kind of overblown romanticisation of how they will be mourned, appreciated and valorised after death. They imagine that it is only post death that they will eventually be viewed as heroes. It is beyond dangerous to feed that fantasy. Suicidal people (already in a state of high emotion) will watch this clip and believe they will be next

An absolutely brilliant result of this will be that the Guardian will now be acutely aware that neither JoMo nor GLP are at all trustworthy, acting in good faith or just basically sane. No more quoting them as sensible sources, I would expect

I am very pleased to find this email. I will invite Mr Maugham again to apologise for his defamatory publication and pay my legal costs to date. And I will happily settle my legal action agaisnt him. There was never any compelling evidence for him to make his accusations, let alone publicise them widely, to do me harm. I hope he will reflect, particularly in light of all he has said about the tragic death of Mr Arday.

As I am reading the news, I am once again reminded this observation from @andrewdoyle_com amazing book, The New Puritans: “The new puritans are brawlers with a persecution complex, wildly throwing punches at strangers and then blaming them for the blood-stains on their hands.”

Some amazing line-ups coming up at Comedy Unleashed in London… 8th Sept @mrTonyLaw 🎟️👉 13th Oct @andrewlawrence 🎟️👉 10th Nov @GeoffNorcott 🎟️👉 Book in haste!

My cousin asked me what Roman history to read. I told him to start here: Livy’s History of Rome Polybius’ Histories Plutarch’s Parallel Lives The Landmark Julius Caesar Tacitus’ Annals Suetonius’ The Twelve Caesars What would you add?

One of the most effective smears is the one that never quite makes an accusation. It offers carefully chosen fragments, strips away the context, and lets the reader supply the fashionable label themselves. Andrew Doyle’s account of Simon Edge’s piece is worth reading. Prejudice and bad faith are real, and should be called out where the evidence supports it. But labels such as “racist”, “fascist” or “phobic” are too often used as shortcuts, not to describe what someone has actually said, but to place them beyond the pale. The effect is to make someone socially suspect before anyone has had to engage with what they actually said. Once the label sticks, evidence often becomes secondary. People stop asking the obvious questions: what was said, in what context, and is the accusation fair? The argument itself gets lost and the label does all the work. That is why this sort of smear is so corrosive: it replaces argument with a cue for people to stop thinking.

Søren Kierkegaard on the Importance of Walking “Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Everyday, I walk myself into a state of well-being & walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. But by sitting still, & the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Thus if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right.”